Dark-web monitoring

Dark-web monitoring is a service, usually part of a password manager, that checks lists of stolen data for the email addresses and passwords your team uses. Criminals trade leaked logins in underground forums and breach dumps. If a work email and password from one of those dumps matches an account in your password manager, the tool raises an alert so the password can be changed. LastPass is one example of a tool that offers it.

Many people reuse passwords, so a breach at an unrelated website can open the door to company systems. Monitoring turns that hidden risk into a visible task. It helps most for companies with many staff, contractors and shared logins, where nobody can reasonably track every breach in the news.

It does not stop a breach and it cannot find every leak. It tells you after the data is already out there, so it works alongside strong unique passwords and two-step login, not instead of them.

• Does it cover every user in the company, or only the admin or individual accounts?
• Does an admin see the alerts, or only the affected employee?
• Does it only report an exposed email address, or also whether the stored password was part of the leak?
• Is it included in the plan you are considering, or sold as an extra?